


A Lifetime Ago

by TheGrinch



Category: Baby Driver (2017)
Genre: Gen, Memories, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-13 06:19:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11753817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGrinch/pseuds/TheGrinch
Summary: Buddy thinks about what Bats said in the diner. Memories from the past are flinging themselves to the front of his mind, and even though he'd rather not dwell on them, he can't seem to push them out.





	A Lifetime Ago

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys :)
> 
> I was just thinking about that diner scene where Bats pisses Darling and Buddy off. It got me thinking about what Buddy's life might have been once and here's the end result. 
> 
> Feel free to review and point out any mistakes. I'm tired, so there's bound to be some :D Especially tense related, I'm crap with tenses. 
> 
> Also, I'm not sure what I think about this. I'm kind of in two minds whether I like it or not. But, I thought I'd put it up anyway and see what you guys think. It can only help improve my writing in the future :) 
> 
> I own nothing except this story idea.

Buddy lay in the crappy excuse for a bed, unable to sleep with what Bats had said at the diner circulating his brain. It wasn’t the comments the prick had made about Darling that was the problem, though he would teach the asshole a lesson for that after the job. No, what bugged him was how close Bats was. With the exception of suggesting that Darling had been a lap dancer, Bats had hit a home run and with it, dragged up memories that Buddy had tried hard to bury and forget. It made him think of a time when he was just Jason van Horn, no codenames or false IDs. He hated it. 

As though sensing that her husband was unhappy, Darling unconsciously snuggled back further into Buddy’s chest, her brown hair tickling his nose. A smile crossed his face and he pressed a kiss into her hair, inhaling the mixed scent of flowers from her shampoo and gunpowder, smiling again when she mumbled in Spanish and buried her head into the pillow. Sleep still wouldn’t come. In the end he gave up, slowly pulling his arm free from under his wife and slinking out of the room with a pack of smokes to get some space and air. 

It’s creepy in the garage and he’s not afraid to admit it. It’s too quiet. Too eerie. 

The only light was above the elevator, leaving most of the place in darkness, adding to the eerie effect. The flame from the lighter added a further momentary brightness before vanishing, followed by a train of pale smoke as he exhaled. 

He wonders if Rose quit smoking in the end. She always said she would, but she could never make it more than four days. Sometimes she used the excuse that smoking was how they met, that she was sentimental because without the habit they would never have married and had the kids. Every time she used that he’d call bullshit, at first with a grin, later on not so much. Hell, by the end he didn’t give a fuck why she carried on smoking, it certainly wasn’t because of sentimentality. She could have dropped dead of lung cancer for all he cared. She might have by now. In twenty years there were only a handful of occasions when Rose hadn’t kept to her pack-a-day habit. 

Who’d have the kids though? 

Well, El at any rate, she was probably the only one them a minor still. Sam was what, 21? 22? December 1993. 23. Hopefully the shit had grown out of being a brat by now. He doubted it. Sam wasn’t just the slightly spoiled kind of brat. No, the little bastard was the kind of brat that people stared at in stores, making faces at each other and assuming that his parents must have been bad ones. He and Rose weren’t bad, they just shouldn’t have had kids so quickly, then again they weren’t planning it. Newlyweds, only in their early twenties, bright futures ahead of them; why would they want kids? They’d talked about aborting Sam, but Rose couldn’t in the end and he accepted that, for a while he was glad actually. But by the end? By the end he wished she had had the abortion. He knew you were meant to love your kids, honestly though, when it came to Sam he just couldn’t. 

Maybe Sam’s different now, changed for the better. He hopes so. He hopes Sam became a better person, went to college and met a person who would be good for him. Unlikely though. The kid was a Joffrey Baratheon in the making no question. Monica had said if Sam had been her kid she would have knocked him into next week over his attitude and Buddy hadn’t doubted her sincerity for one moment. 

Buddy drops the cigarette to the ground, lighting another almost immediately and dragging on it heavily, though so not so heavily as before.

If Sam was 23, Annabelle must have been 21. June 1995. Yeah, Annabelle was 21, almost 22. God he hated that name. It was such a drippy name and he regretted agreeing to let Rose pick the name if it was a girl. Of course his mother had adored it, thought it very ladylike, but then she was a woman whose favourite thing about Rose when they were going out was the fact that she came from the Upper East Side, so he didn’t let her opinion count for much. Least she had an opinion though; his father had just nodded and left to make a drink. 

When she was little, Annabelle was the spit of him, though he wouldn’t know if that was still the case. But then? Same bone structure, same eye colour, same hair colour. Same everything. People said it was cute. He didn’t agree. At least Annabelle was better than Sam. Not much, but better. She wasn’t a brat, she just noisy. Always talking but never really saying anything; the type of person Doc would have shot after their first job. Who knows though? Now she might actually be using the English language for something somewhat intellectual. Then again, he’d worked on Wall Street and Rose at a top law firm and all their fancy talk hadn’t been able to save their marriage. Though to be fair they’d stopped trying after the third marriage counsellor.

Looking back, Annabelle’s birth was the start of the end really. Two unplanned, and truthfully unwanted, kids in two years and neither he or Rose were willing to put their careers on hold for them. Hiring Charlie as a full-time nanny had helped, but realistically, he’d only diverted the focus of their problems for a while, not solved them. That was when the gambling really took off, along with the drugs. It wasn’t like Rose didn’t have her niches of course, he’d found the bottles more than once, it would have just been hypocritical to comment on it, so he didn’t. In a way he feels sorry for Annabelle now, born just as a marriage is going to the crapper is enough to make anyone say anything for attention growing up. 

Though to be fair, El was born after the marriage was in the crapper, so in a way she had the biggest excuse to act out. Not that she ever did. Baby reminded him of his munchkin in that way. Both of them were quiet, speaking only if they wanted to or if they thought it was worth it, each word carefully thought through before being uttered. Next to Sam and Annabelle, his munchkin had been refreshing, it was one of the major reasons El had been his favourite. 

It was odd in a way. He and Rose had been having problems for a long time, so another kid seemed the stupidest idea known to man. Hell, it had taken Rose almost a month to let him be the one to pick the name this time, not that he even wanted another baby. Three years after Annabelle was still three years too soon. Thankfully Rose hadn’t objected to ‘Eleanor’ as his pick because he was not ready for another month of fighting to find a new one. Then, when El was born she had come out looking the image of Rose. She had a little tuft of light red hair that would no doubt darken to match her mother’s, her skin was just as pale and her eyes were the same brown colour. Anyone would be reasonable to think that he wouldn’t like El. Not only was she another chain keeping him in an unhappy marriage, she was the mini version of her mother. However, despite it all, when the nurse placed the tiny figure into his arms, he couldn’t help but love her. Even now he doesn’t know why. Frankly, he doesn’t give a fuck.

Buddy puts the cigarette out next to the first on the ground, watching the ash spread for a minute as he tries to think of why he loved his munchkin when he couldn’t the other two. He grabs another cigarette, but he doesn’t light it, rolling it back and forth as his ponders an answer. Maybe it was the eyes. Maybe that’s the big reason why he also feels drawn to Baby. 

While Rose’s eyes had been hard and distant, just as Monica’s had been wild and dangerous, both El and Baby had warm eyes. They were comforting somehow. It was a miracle really considering that El had been raised in a household with an addict father and alcoholic mother in an unhappy marriage. And Baby? God knows what the poor kid had seen in his shithole of a life. More than enough that was for sure. Life was a bitch. 

Just as Buddy exhaled he swore he could hear something. Nothing turns up when he looks and so writes it off as him being tired, causing him to ponder whether he should finish the cigarette or just go back to Monica now and try to sleep. 

Buddy wonders whether she realises just how much she saved his life. 

She knew all about his marriage, however, even after everything, he’d never been able to tell her that the night they met was the night he was going to top himself. Perhaps after nearly six years together she’d guessed. After all, she wasn’t stupid like some people thought, not by a long shot if she was training to become a doctor. They always joked though that she was better at putting bullets in people than taking them out. Maybe it was her medical instinct that had caused to come over to him in the bar; it certainly wasn’t his appearance because he was a mess that night. He’s never asked her. He doesn’t plan to. All that matters is that she found him, saved him and took him away to the life they had now. Between them there’s only one regret. It’s his. Leaving his munchkin behind. 

Her 18th was two weeks ago. His munchkin wasn't a munchkin anymore. She probably wouldn't even recognise him now. 

Buddy tosses the cigarette away. He’s had enough of memory lane. Tomorrow, after the job’s done, he’s going to get a bag of coke and do enough to kill a cat. First, sleep. No, first he’ll check on Baby, make sure the kid is okay after the incident before and isn’t going to chicken out on them. Then sleep.

The elevator pings before he can move back into the light. Baby practically runs to the car, not noticing Buddy at the edge of the darkness. 

What the fuck is the kid doing?

 

 

Jason watches as Monica collapses to the ground and he prays a bullet only nicked her. He ducks down and peers through a gap to see. 

He should have told that she saved him. He had six years to say something. 

 

 

Jason stares at Baby’s face as he falls. 

He wonders if his munchkin's eyes became that cold after he left. 

He hopes not.


End file.
